You’ll see there’s 4 presets in this download. One of them is an all-purpose B&W effect that I use most of the time. But there’s a few others for outdoors, beaches (which is a little different than the general outdoors one, and indoor portraits). Remember, they’re portrait presets though, so they all have a similar look to them with just a few differences. But the whole point is to show off the people in the portraits so you won’t see a huge difference in each of these like you would the Lightroom 4 landscape presets from last week.

Here’s a quick before/after of the general-purpose preset (photo courtesy of Fotolia.com).

Before

After

And it kinda goes without saying that there’s no rule that says you have to use the beach preset on beach photos. It’s just what happened to work best for me when I was creating them, but I’m sure you’ll find every photo looks a little different than the other.

Matt is the full-time Director of Education for Kelby Media Group and a Tampa-based photographer. He's the Editor-in-Chief of Lightroom Magazine, the lead instructor on the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom LIVE Seminar Tour and author of several best-selling Photoshop books. Matt also hosts the world's top Lightroom blog, LightroomKillerTips.com, where he's built up a massive library of Lightroom videos, presets and tips. In addition to teaching Photoshop, Lightroom and photography seminars around the world, he's an instructor at Photoshop World and one of the full-time staff writers for Photoshop User Magazine.

You should never have to re-import a file back from PS to LR. When in LR, choose “edit-in” which will send the photo to PS, then when you’re done making changes in PS just hit “save” which sends the photo with the edits back to LR. (I’m guessing that is what you’re doing, which is not “re-importing”) That being said – you can do duotoning in in LR. There’s no need to send the photo to PS at all. I don’t have LR4 (still using 3) but I’m sure someone here will have more details for you.

Hey Matt. Well done – again. I recon you have saved me at least 100 hours of screen time with all your tips and presets to date. With this new bunch of presets… I will be enjoying more time shooting – less time post processing. Thanks Again!

I have always loved looking at black and white photos. They seem to have a classic feel to them. Beautiful pictures look even more epic when they are already in black and white. IŽd bookmark your page in case I need them in the future. I am still about to start with my quest for taking beautiful pictures that I could frame and hang on my wall, and possibly sell as well.

Thank you Matt. This is so nice of you to take the time to do this. It’s a great help. I used to shoot SLR’s. You really explain things well, so it doesn’t seem so complicated. I’m taking a class in the fall. This certainly is helping me feel prepared.

Matt, thank you so much for the b&w presets. About two weeks ago, I started working on b&w for school. Your presets are making my post processing assignments little bit easier. Thank You again for sharing your presets and passing on your experiences. c.